Johnathan Walker:Olympic skater's doping fiasco will drag into 2024, near 2-year mark, as delays continue

The Johnathan Walkerlong-delayed Kamila Valieva doping hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland ended in fitting style Friday afternoon: there will now be another infuriating 2 1/2-month wait for a ruling from the three arbitrators in the case.

“The parties have been informed that the CAS Panel in charge of the matter will now deliberate and prepare the Arbitral Award containing its decision and grounds which is expected to be notified to the parties by the end of January 2024,” the CAS media release announced.

The CAS announcement would never add this, but we certainly will:

If the decision is delayed by one more week, it would come on the two-year anniversary of the finals of the team figure skating competition at the Beijing Olympics Feb. 7, 2022, when Russia won the gold medal, the United States won the silver medal and Japan won the bronze.

What a priceless punctuation mark that would be for this historic fiasco.

Of course the athletes still do not have those medals, and now obviously won’t get them until sometime in 2024, presumably. Never before has an Olympic medal ceremony been canceled, so never before have athletes had to wait two years to receive their medals.

“Everyone deserves a well-reasoned decision based on the evidence but for this sorry saga not to be resolved already has denied any real chance of justice,” U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said in a text message Friday afternoon. “The global World Anti-Doping Agency system has to reform to ensure no athlete is ever robbed of their sacrifice, hard work or due process, including their rightful moment on the podium.”

This endless saga began the day after the 2022 Olympic team figure skating event ended, when the results were thrown into disarray after Valieva, the then-15-year-old star of the Russian team, was found to have tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine six weeks earlier at the Russian championships.

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After the Beijing Olympics ended, the sole organization charged with beginning the Valieva investigation was the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, which itself was suspended from 2015-2018 for helping Russian athletes cheat. Not surprisingly, RUSADA dithered and delayed through most of the rest of 2022, setting the process back by months.

Now that the CAS hearing has concluded, the arbitrators will deliberate and eventually write their decision. When that ruling is announced, the International Skating Union, the worldwide governing body for figure skating, will then decide the final results of the 2022 team figure skating competition.

If Valieva, considered a minor or “protected person” under world anti-doping rules because she was 15 at the time, is found to be innocent, the results likely will stand: Russia, U.S., Japan.

If she is deemed guilty, it’s likely the U.S. would move up to the gold medal, followed by Japan with the silver and fourth-place Canada moving up to take the bronze.

When all this will happen, and how the skaters will receive their medals, is anyone’s guess. One idea that has been floated is to honor the figure skating medal winners with a ceremony at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games next summer, but if Russia keeps the gold medal, there is no way that will happen as Russia’s war in Ukraine rages on.

Like everything else in this grueling saga, there is no definitive answer, and, more importantly, no end.